Military Winners & Losers at the 2015 Oscars

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23 Feb 2015By James Barber

"Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1" was a big winner at the Academy Awards.

Birdman cleaned up at the Academy Awards, sweeping Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay and Cinematography. Hollywood recognized yet another Inside Show Biz movie, continuing a 21st century habit: Argo, The Artist and even The King's Speech are all really movies about putting on a show. They passed over American Sniper, the most popular movie to be nominated in years, and Boyhood, an innovative movie about everyday people. Come back in twenty years and Sniper, Boyhood and maybe The Grand Budapest Hotel will be the 2014 movies we still remember.

American Sniper picked up a single award for Sound Editing and Unbroken got shut out, but that doesn't mean there weren't a few military films that made a big impact at the Academy Awards.

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Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1won the award for Documentary Short Subject. The film addresses an alarming fact: while veterans make up less than 1% of the U.S. population, they account for 20% of the suicides in this country. The film profiles the men and women who run the Veterans Crisis Line, which has handled over 900,000 calls from men and women struggling to cope. Presented in cooperation with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Crisis Hotline is a powerful film that deserves a wide audience. You can watch it now on HBO Go or buy it from iTunes or Amazon Instant Video.

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No matter how you might feel about NSA contractor Edward Snowden's decision to leak classified documents to the media, Citizenfouris a must-see movie. Winner of the Documentary Feature award, Laura Poitras' movie unfolds in real time as Snowden contacts her and journalist Glenn Greenwald and she films the entire process as Snowden turns over the documents and his revelations get leaked to the world. The movie plays like a thriller and the events documented here will continue to have an enormous impact on how we conduct our security and foreign policy for years to come. The movie premieres tonight at 9pm on HBO and will be available on HBO Go after that. You can also watch it online at thoughtmaybe.com.

The Imitation Game (about the WWII intelligence officers who broke the Nazi Enigma code) won Best Adapted Screenplay and The Grand Budapest Hotel (set in Eastern Europe during the Nazi rise to power) picked up awards for Best Original Score, Costume Design, Production Design and Makeup & Hairstyling.

If you're here because you wanted American Sniper to win, make sure you check out Crisis Hotline. Give Boyhood, The Imitation Game and The Grand Budapest Hotel a shot.